Home

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Home, and back to reality. But not before one final flourish, which included snow storms and closed roads in New Zealand, and the Rolling Stones at Glastonbury.

I spent one more day in Queenstown after my last update, and was determined to make it back up Coronet Peak to do some more skiing before I left. I had been waiting for the weather to turn before I went up again, and unfortunately it only got worse. On my last day I dragged Kev out of bed and we made our way down to the bus station in some pretty heavy rain. As we ascended to the base of Coronet Peak in the bus, that rain turned to snow and before long it became pretty difficult to see anything. I stepped off the bus into what was now a full blown blizzard. After buying a lift pass from a girl who tried talking me out of it, we headed up the lift to the top of the mountain. White, that was pretty much all you could see. There had been lots of new snow in the previous few days and conditions would have been great if you could see where you were going. There were times when I didn't realise I was going downhill until I felt myself picking up speed. I lasted about an hour or so before deciding to call it a day, it was bloody cold and I wasn't having much fun. The worst conditions I have ever skied in. What did I expect though? I'm still glad I went up as I'd originally planned on going to New Zealand in the winter to ski, and had only managed to do one day prior to that.

As my time in Queenstown came to an end, one of the worst storms in the previous two decades was brewing in the north of the south island, exactly where I needed to get to. A metre of snow was forecast over a few days in and around Christchurch, which is where my flight home was departing from. The Stray bus was supposed to take me up through the centre of the south island via Mount Cook and Rangitata to Christchurch, but I was informed by some locals that managing to do that would be extremely unlikely. I looked into changing my flights with Qantas to fly from Queenstown but they didn't want to know about it. I'd have to just wait and see how things panned out. The day to leave came and I was still unsure what I was going to do. Our 8.30 departure time was delayed as the roads north out of Queenstown had been shut by this stage. We were to wait until 12 to see if they would open again before giving up and trying again tomorrow. However 12 o'clock came and things were so bad that in order to give us the best possibility of getting to Christchurch on time we were to abandon Mount Cook altogether and head east to Dunedin and drive up to Christchurch along the coast road. This was the route that was suggested to me by people who knew the area well so I was happy enough with this. As the bus pulled out of the town I was genuinely sad to be leaving, the first and only place I think I can say that about. I'd been to other places I had really liked and enjoyed, but there was nothing quite like Queenstown. Also after ten days this was by far the longest I'd spent in any one place since leaving Dublin, and was the closest thing I'd had to a home in over four months. I'd woken Kev and Fumi in the morning to say goodbye, and even Moss turned up to see me off. It would have been great to be able to stay for longer, but I had a Rolling Stones gig to attend. Fortunately due to the delay in leaving I was able to get one last pie for lunch from Fergbaker, which was greatly appreciated.

The bus arrived in Dunedin later that evening, just about. Around 45 minutes outside of Queenstown it had broken down, and for a while it looked like I'd be going nowhere. Luckily Stray have a route that runs south of Queenstown which had been cancelled that day due to the snow. We were able to take that bus and be on our way, I guess one final bus breaking down was inevitable on this trip. Dunedin is modelled after Edinburgh apparently, and it certainly felt like being in Scotland. Cold, wet, windy, a little bit dull. Actually weather aside it was a nice enough town, but I didn't get to see much of it. The following day was spent driving straight to Christchurch, and once again we just about made it. The roads out of Dunedin were closed in the morning, but luckily they were being cleared constantly so that they could be temporarily opened to backed up traffic. After spending four hours not going very far, we were finally out of Dunedin and onto the flat coast road to Christchurch. I arrived in Christchurch a day earlier than planned, and now only had to worry about catching my flight two days later.

The city centre of Christchurch was completely destroyed by an earthquake in 2011, and it's possible to visit most of it to see how the city is recovering. However I barely left the hostel in my day and a half there. The metre of snow that was forecast for the city thankfully didn't materialise, but only because it wasn't cold enough. It rained nonstop up until my final morning there and going outside wasn't really appealing. At this point I was just sitting around waiting to leave, which was a shame because one of the last things I wanted to do at this stage was to go back to Ireland. I originally thought four and a half months travelling would be long enough, and in a lot of ways it was. I didn't want to go home though, I knew that much.

The weather cleared up on the morning I left and my flight departed Christchurch without any delays. I made my connections in Sydney, Dubai and London without problem and after around 34 hours I found myself back in Dublin again. After being slightly depressed on the flight at the thought of going home, I was surprised at how quickly I settled back in. Within a matter of hours it all felt very normal, like I'd never even left.

After a couple of days it was time to leave again, with the slightly less glamorous location of Bristol being my destination. However I was off to Glastonbury and the glamour would be provided by the Rolling Stones, probably my favourite band. I'm not sure how glamorous watching a bunch of pensioners do their best to move around the stage would be to most people, but I couldn't think of anything I wanted to see more. I met Dan in the airport and after a massive queue at T2 we were ready to go, that is until our flight was delayed by twenty minutes. The delay turned into an hour and by the time we got to Bristol airport we didn't have enough time to catch our bus to the festival. Luckily they were plenty of other people looking to share a taxi, and we were even able to stop on the way to pick up some much needed booze. The only problem with this however is where the taxi dropped us off. We were camping in the official off site campsite, Worthy View. If we had got the bus we would have been able to then get a free shuttle to Worthy View from the festival bus station. Instead we had no real idea where we'd been dropped off and just began to walk towards the nearest entrance, with our massive (and very heavy) bag of food and drink in hand. After about a 20 minute walk we got through one of the entrances and began to ask staff about the best way to get to Worthy View, surprisingly most of them had never even heard of it. We eventually found one guy who told us we were about half way between the bus station (where we could have walked back to and got the shuttle from) and the campsite, so we decided to just walk. We were nowhere near halfway, and the trek continued. On top of this it had started to spit rain as we got out of the taxi, and by the time we were inside the festival it was getting quite heavy. After a few wrong turns and a couple of fairly big hills, we eventually reached our tent over an hour later. Absolutely soaked and extremely tired. I would have to rank this trek considerably lower than the ones I did in Thailand and Vietnam. The worst was over however, and after that evening it didn't rain again for the entire festival. After crashing out I eventually made my way down to Ali's tent which was somewhere near the Pyramid Stage. From watching Glasto on TV I knew the Pyramid Stage had a lot of lasers coming out of the top of it, so I just followed these. Turns out I'd followed the wrong lasers and was at the other side of the festival; I eventually found the others but the sheer size of the place was already apparent by this stage. Just hung out for a bit and got some doughnuts, didn't do anything major this night.

On Friday there were no acts I really wanted to see, in fact from the entire line up the only acts I was going to make sure I didn't miss were the Rolling Stones and the Smashing Pumpkins. The weather was dry and by the evening time wellies weren't really needed anymore. I actually can't remember what we did during the day, mostly just soaked up the atmosphere and had a drink or two. In the evening we were at the Park stage to see Dinosaur Jr, and then went to West Holts to see Seasick Steve and Chic. I'd never really listened to Dinosaur Jr but they were my kind of music. Drums, bass and big ripping guitar solos, enjoyed their stuff. The crowd for Seasick Steve was a lot bigger than I expected and we missed half his set, but I enjoyed what I saw. Was very happy to see John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin fame playing with him, one of my favourite bass players. Chic were brilliant, just a lot of fun. I never knew how much pop/disco standards Nile Rodgers had been involved in until I saw him play and recognised nearly every song. Highlight for me was his rendition of David Bowie's Let's Dance. After this I purchased myself a rather fetching cat hat, and set off into the night with Dan. Any attempt to meet up with Ali was a waste of time as the amount of people around made it nearly impossible to find anybody. We went to Arcadia to check out the fire show, and then as far as I remember we just wandered around stopping by some random things. We'd definitely had a few drinks by this stage. I think we tried to get into Shangri-La which is where the main after hours party goes on, but there was an hour queue to get in so decided not to bother. I don't remember getting back to the campsite, which is good because walking up that hill completely sucks. Really enjoyed this night, the sheer randomness of it I think is what makes Glasto great.

Saturday was more of the same, but with a Rolling Stones set to finish it off. Hung out by the Pyramid Stage in the afternoon and had a few drinks while enjoying the sunshine. Back up to Worthy View for dinner before heading back down to Pyramid to get a good spot for the Stones. Primal Scream were just finishing their set, and by the looks of it their lead singer needs to check himself into rehab. In order to ensure they had the best sound quality possible (or far more likely to satisfy Mick Jagger's ego), there was a 90 minute gap between Primal Scream finishing and the Rolling Stones coming out. Standing around waiting for them to start wasn't much fun, especially as I'd spent the entire previous two days doing nothing but standing and walking. I looked into buying myself a t-shirt to pass the time, but apparently they'd all sold out by this stage. 21.45 arrived, and eventually the wait was over. They arrived on stage and went straight into Jumping Jack Flash, and I had a big smile across my face. It wasn't a perfect show by any stretch of the imagination, but for a massive fan who'd never seen them live before I was extremely happy. Highlight of the evening for me was Midnight Rambler with Mick Taylor, a great song and also a great performance. The only problem with the show for me was even though we were reasonably near the front we were still quite a long way from the stage and it was difficult to see much without looking at the screens. Also we were just in front of the rear speakers so the only sound we were getting was from the stage speakers, it really wasn't loud enough. Saturday night was spent doing more wandering around, with Ali in tow this time. I got myself a pie from one of the food stalls. It wasn't bad, but was nothing compared to Fergbaker.

On Sunday we decided to head out at around 1 o'clock and stay out for the day. Our feet were getting wrecked by this stage and the thought of doing the hour round trip to Worthy View and back to get food/drinks wasn't appealing. It was sunny again so Dan and I went to the Park stage to just sit down with a few beers and see whoever was playing. A band called Stealing Sheep followed by ex Charlatans front man Tim Burgess. Both were awful, the less said about them the better. We then tried to get into Bruce Forsyth for the laugh but I had underestimated the man's popularity. The tent was completely wedged and we were getting nowhere near it. We eventually found our way back to the others and waited by the Other Stage for the Smashing Pumpkins set at 8 o'clock. They were brilliant, I am a fan of theirs but I wasn't expecting them to be this good. The original line up is gone, but Billy Corgan has managed to replace them with far better musicians. He's even found a drummer that's better than Jimmy Chamberlain, which I didn't think was possible. We finished the night by going to see Phoenix, a French synth pop/rock band who weren't bad. Didn't stay out too long that night as we had to be up early to make our way back to Bristol airport.

Myself and Dan got up before 9 and walked back to the bus station, which took considerably less time than our trek to the campsite when we first got to the festival. After some queuing we were eventually on a bus to Bristol and then made it to Bristol airport in time for our flight, which was once again delayed. Don't fly with Aer Arann, they're useless. I really enjoyed Glastonbury but it does take a lot out of you, and isn't cheap. Especially if you are doing it from abroad. I'm not sure I'd do it again without seeing the line-up first, but tickets are usually long gone by the time the line-up is announced so it may be unlikely that I'll return. I got to see the Rolling Stones before they died (which can't be too far off now) so I'm very happy with that.

So that's it then, I'm home and before long will be back in work. I guess I should do some kind of epilogue to wrap this whole thing up. I didn't decide to go travelling because I had a huge desire to see the world, I mostly went because I was bored in Dublin and needed to do something different for a while before I was driven insane. However, I can say that it was easily the best decision I've ever made. I loved (nearly) every minute of it, barely found one place I didn't like and met a lot of great people along the way. But I guess you've probably heard this before. Everyone who has ever been travelling always says the same thing, and now I'm one of them. So I'll say the same thing that was said to me while I was planning this trip last year. If you have any interest at all in travelling then drop whatever you are doing and go and do it while you still can. You won't regret it.

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Photos

Moss Cat
Could really do with losing some weight

The World's Steepest Street
Dunedin's premier tourist attraction

New Zealand Heating System
Perfectly safe

The Rolling Stones
Complete with former guitarist Mick Taylor

Post Rolling Stones Satisfaction
Both figuratively and literally

Smashing Pumpkins
Belly Corgan

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